


Garden Warfare

by orphan_account



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Garden Warfare, Plants vs. Zombies AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-10
Updated: 2014-04-19
Packaged: 2018-01-18 22:24:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1445011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based off of the Plants Vs. Zombies Let's Plays, when zombies begin to rise and attack the plants, it's necessary to protect them just as much as humans need  to be protected.  That's where the Gardeners come in--genetically modified people with plant-like qualities.  Immune to the virus and with superhuman abilities, they are the greatest weapons that Scientists Free and Gruchy ever made.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Gardeners

“Acid, too! This is bloody top!”

Those were the first words that he ever heard. They were quickly followed by his first ever thought: this person sounds like a moron.

“Yes, tha’s great and all, but…” This was a different voice, a different man speaking. The voice was just as heavily accented as the first, but somehow sounded more even. “But didn’t we agree that acid isn’t a good quality for Gardeners to have?”

There was a huff, followed by, “Come on, Dan, this is great. Look!” Hands gripped his cheeks, turning his head roughly. If he didn’t feel so leaden, he’d probably resist the manhandling. As it was, a weak growl left his throat, coming out as a faint gurgle. He could feel thick liquid drip down his cheek, onto whatever he was laying on.

“It doesn’t burn the synthetic material at all. Just organic, perfect for weakening the zom—ouch!”

The man cut off suddenly as some of the acid touched his finger, jerking away as it hissed on top of his bare skin. From where he lay, eyes still practically glued shut, he could tell that the man was rushing away, footfalls heavy against some kind of metal, then the sound of water.

He would have felt concerned for this stranger if the second one hadn’t started to laugh. “Yes, absolutely perfect for weakening zombies and Gavins,” the man, Dan he had been called, told him, voice filled with mirth. Then his tone dropped, all serious now. “But also perfect for destroying plants.”

A long pause stretched out in the room. After a squeak of a faucet, the water stopped, and footsteps told him that Gavin had returned. “We’ll just teach him to be careful,” he said nonchalantly, and he could hear the shrug in his voice, even without seeing it.

Another silence. “If he ever wakes up…” Dan said, apprehensive.

That would be his cue.

Groaning, he forced his eyes open with a great force of will. Bright light assaulted his retina, blinding him, and he slammed his eyes shut again with a cry.  
“Oops! I almost bloody forgot. Dan, you mincey sausage, why didn’t you remind me? Here you are, Ray,” Gavin said. From the way the voice was directed at him, and the subsequent feeling of something sliding on his head over his eyes, he assumed that he was being addressed there.

Did that make Ray his name? Hm, not bad.

“Sorry, Gav, thought you’d remember it, considering the glasses were your idea, and you assured me that there was no way in hell you’d forget since they were sitting right in front of your gigantic nose.”

“My nose is not that big, shut up Dan!” Although Gavin protested the insult, his voice was without malice. “Go on Ray, you can open your eyes now.”

This time, he was much more cautious. It wasn’t so hard the second time, and his eyelids fluttered open with ease, if a little hesitant. There were a pair of glasses placed over his eyes that blocked out much of the harsh light that had just blinded him. A face swam into view over him—a man with tousled hair, a large grin, and…

“Your nose is huge, man.” Those were Ray’s first ever spoken words and he laughed at the astonished look on the man’s face.

“Ray! Dan, you see what you taught him?”

There was another man standing next to Gavin, a brunette. He grinned, clapping the other on the back. “Hey, you got your acid, B. I get the insults,” he said with a chuckle.  
Ray frowned, rolling his eyes at the way they talked about him as if he were a subject. That was a mistake, he realized, squeezing his eyes shut. The movement caused a jolt of pain in his head. “Where am I?” he asked once the headache subsided. He looked around the room. It was small, clean, tidy, with tons of cabinets, a faucet int he corner, and the metal table that he was laying on. Beside him was a smaller table with various tools that he couldn’t even begin to guess what they did.

Gavin grinned at him. “Welcome to the Free-Gruchy Laboratories! Where Gavin Free and Dan Gruchy perform miracles and where you, Ray Narvaez Jr., was born!” he exclaimed.  
Dan rolled his eyes with apparently none of the trouble that Ray had with it. “It’s definitely not called that. Last time I checked, no one gave the bloody place a name. We just use it for… our purposes.” When he said ‘purposes’, he gave a small nod toward Ray. It made his skin crawl.

“Well there’s no name so I went and gave it one, you donut.”

“Free-Gruchy sounds stupid. If anything, it’d be Gruchy-Free.”

“That doesn’t work you mingy pisspot! My name has to go first!”

“And why exactly does it have to do that?”

“Because the Gardeners were my—!”

“HEY!”

Ray’s exclamation made the both of them jump. They looked over at him quickly, as if they had completely forgotten that he was there in their argument about the name of the place.

Once he was sure that he had their attention, he cleared his throat. “I’ve got questions. Why am I Ray Narvaez Jr? What happened to Ray Narvaez? What do you mean by I was born here, and what are you talking about with your ‘purposes’?” He placed the word in air quotes, looking from Gavin to Dan. Ray felt so lost and completely confused. Nothing at all made sense to him.

The two… scientists? Was that the word? Whatever. The two scientists shared a look, Gavin making a small head motion toward Ray as if to say ‘Come on, you tell him’. Ray had the distinct feeling that he was not going to like whatever the explanation was.

“So, ah,” Dan began, clearing his throat. “The original Ray Narvaez is unimportant. Don’t worry about him.”

That was some start to the explanation. Ray pressed his lips into a thin line. If Dan was going to tell him not to worry about the original of his same name, then he definitely was going to worry.

“Anyway!” Gavin immediately stepped in, elbowing Dan in the ribs and shooting him a look. Dan bumped the other back, and for a moment Ray thought that they were going to get into some fight. Yet a couple more bumps and they finally left off and returned their attention to the waiting Ray.

As he watched them, Ray felt the same dribbling down his chin from earlier, before he gained motor control. Swiping his hand across his mouth, he glanced down. A toxic green liquid came away on his skin. It looked just like some harmless liquid to Ray, but he remembered the sizzling when Gavin accidentally touched it, and he knew it was anything but harmless. Acid, he thought Gavin called it?

“Ray?”

He looked up again at Gavin’s prompting, realizing that his attention had wavered. “Oh yeah, sorry. What were you saying?” he asked, shaking his hand to get knock the acid from his skin. Although it didn’t hurt, it still felt rather gross that something from his mouth was just sitting on his hand.

Gavin grabbed his elbow in a hurry. “Stop, don’t bloody do that! You’ll get acid everywhere!” he admonished him.

Frowning at the scientist, Ray had half a mind to spit acid in his face. Instead, he decided to just wipe it away on his leg. That was when he became aware that he was bare of any clothing, except for some cloth sheet draped over him.

“Do I get clothes at any point?” he demanded, feeling his cheeks flush with embarrassment. “Can we, like, walk and talk?”

For a moment, Gavin appeared confused, as if he hadn’t expected Ray to react that way to not having clothes. “Yes, of course. We’ve got special clothing for the Gardeners—it’ll resist tearing and is optimum for maneuverability. Also, it should resist that acid you secrete, which is a plus.”

“Good.” Ray didn’t care about any of the stuff that Gavin was explaining about. He just wanted to be dressed. Not to mention that the bewildered, yet intensely interested look that the scientist was giving him made him uncomfortable. Ray glanced over to Dan, but the other’s face was unreadable, and it was just Gavin looking at him like that. His discomfort turned into irritation, and he leaned away from the scientist with a glare. “Ok, what are you looking at me like that for?”

Gavin was silent for a few seconds. “You’re embarrassed about being naked?”

Why did he sound so confused about it? “Of course I am, moron. Who wouldn’t be?” Ray snapped. He was done with all this secrecy. Could someone just tell him what was going on?

“Right.” Gavin tilted his head. “That’s very human.”

What the hell was that supposed to mean?

Before Ray could ask about it, Dan cut in, gesturing for Ray to follow him. “Come on, I’ll show you to where you can change and explain.”

Swinging his legs over the edge of the table, he wrapped the sheet awkwardly around his waist and stood, padding across the linoleum floor after the other.  
Dan led him over to a small alcove, sectioned off with a curtain. As Ray changed into the clothes he found inside as promised, the situation was explained to him. Apparently Ray’s creation happened right in the middle of—and because of, incidentally—the zombie apocalypse. The kind of thing that frequents video games, Dan told him even though the analogy was lost on Ray.

“But it’s different from in the games. The zombies don’t go after people, not directly. I mean, they’re sort of like sharks that way. They will attack people if it comes down to it, but they don’t actively go after people... all the time.” Again, the analogy was lost, but Ray trusted Dan’s word on it. “Instead, they’ll attack plants.”

Then Dan launched into some biology lesson about how important plants were. Ray found his mind wandering, tugging the shirt over his head, fixing the glasses on his face, locking an anti-acid mask half-mask over his mouth. He tested the latch on the mask, and found that it popped open quickly and easily. For now he left it open.

“That’s where you come in!” Dan suddenly addressing Ray again snapped his attention back to the present. “Gavin and I have been working a bloody long time here to develop the Gardeners. Genetically modified humans, with a little bit of a plant twist. Immune to being infected and protecting a vital resource for almost all life!”

Ray lingered, thinking about what Dan was telling him, playing a bit with the open latch. It made… sense that he was created just to fight. He supposed it did, anyway. “What if I don’t want to fight zombies?” he asked in a quiet voice. There was a silence, and when he pulled back the curtain he found Dan and Gavin looking at him with matching puzzled looks.

“Well what else are you going to do then?” Gavin asked.

He thought about it, but there was literally nothing that came to mind. Ray didn’t even know what this world was. He sighed. “Good point, I guess.”

So he’d fight. At least for now.


	2. Welcome to the Garden

It was a delivery truck, Gavin told him. Ray looked over the large armored vehicle, feeling slightly intimidated by the size of it. And he was expected to ride in this?

“Bloody hell, Ray, it’s just a truck,” Gavin said, exasperated when Ray voiced his concerns on it.

Dan chimed in with, “You’ll be seeing it twice a week anyway. They’ll drop you off at the Garden you’ll be guarding, then pick up the crops to bring back for the human strongholds.”

When Ray’s distrustful expression didn’t change, Gavin shooed him off. “This’ll be your only chance to see the different Gardens on the way to yours, so go and use it you mingy spaff.”

And so, although Ray still had his misgivings about the truck and the woman driving it, he slid into the passenger’s seat—an uncomfortable fold-down platform attached to the wall—and locked the belt across his lap according to the driver’s instructions. That was the only time she spoke to him the entire trip. It made him actually disappointed to leave the two scientists behind. They had been friendly to the point where it was almost annoying, and they constantly drove home the point that Ray wasn’t actually human, but at least they spoke to him. This woman had a steely look, her mouth pressed into a line so tightly that Ray was pretty sure that it was stuck like that.

On the way to wherever this Garden was that Ray was to defend, they stopped at several others. For the first time in a couple months of training and associating almost exclusively with humans, Ray saw people that were different—people who were like him. Not all of them had acid dripping from their mouth, but all of them had a sort of plant-like quality to them.

Ray remained in the truck as the woman got out, gazing out the window at what was going on. Sometimes the driver would pull out packages to give to the Gardeners. Supplies, he assumed they were. Most of the time, the Gardeners gave her the packages. As Dan and Gavin had explained, these were crops that had been grown in the Gardens, grown for humans and protected by the Gardeners.

Finally, they stopped at the Garden that Ray would help in defending. The only indication that it was the last stop was the way the driver gave him a look then gestured for him to get out of the truck. She kept silent and with a groan and bit of grumbling, Ray unbuckled and exited the vehicle, as per her unspoken instructions.

When he climbed down from the truck, legs unsteady from sitting for so long, he gave her a nod. “Thanks for the conversation,” he told her sarcastically.

The driver gave him a look. It was almost the same as the expression that had been on her face the whole drive, but her eyes were narrowed just slightly more. Unamused by the joke. Geez, humans were a tough crowd.

“Hey Tauna, here for the crops?”

Ray turned to see a man with tattoos all along his arms making his way toward them. His eyes travelled up the man’s—another Gardener, he guessed—arms and to the most ridiculous mustache in the world perched on his upper lip. He snorted before he could stop himself, ducking his head to contain his burst of laughter. Both of the older people ignored him.

The woman—Tauna apparently, although there was no way Ray could have known that from their sparse conversation—shook her head. “No. Drop off today.” Her words were clipped, speaking shortly. Just enough to get her point across, but no more.

The man nodded. “Good. We had a delivery truck come by not even fuckin’ three days ago. There’s nothing to give you guys, and the others were ready to fuckin’ riot,” he said. His eyes landed on Ray, looking him over briefly before flicking his eyes back to Tauna.

“New Gardener, huh?” he asked her. She nodded in response. “And… do you know what’s so special about him?” This time, she shook her head, and he sighed. “Of course not. You never ask questions. Well, whatever I guess.”

Ray was beginning to feel angry by this time. They spoke about him as if he weren’t even here. Just when he opened his mouth to speak, the man finally turned his attention to him, giving him much the same curious look that he’d seen on Gavin and Dan’s faces so many times in the few days that he lived with them. He resisted the urge to step back away from him. “What?”

“What’d they call you and what do you do?” he asked Ray.

“What did they call me?” Ray frowned. He didn’t like the way that this man said that. It was too close to the way that the scientists treated him like just an experiment—which admittedly was true, but it didn’t make it any more okay.

“Yeah, that’s what I just said, come on stupid.”

Ray opened his mouth to make an angry retort, but he was cut off by a short laugh beside him that made him jump. The driver woman actually had a smile on her lips, laughing at the exchange that was going on in front of her. His first instinct was to blurt something stupid out, mostly something along the lines of ‘Wow, you have a personality after all!’ But he actually wanted to try living for a while, so he remained silent.

“Alright, Geoff, I’m going to go,” Tauna told the man, the smile slowly fading from her lips, until once again her mouth was pressed into that thin steely line.

The man—Geoff, the driver had said—glanced over at her. He gave her a friendly grin and a little wave. Ray half expected for Geoff to return his gaze to him and drop the friendliness completely. That didn’t happen. In fact, when the man looked back to Ray, his smile seemed almost warmer.

“Seriously though, who are you?” he prompted Ray, crossing his arms and tilting his head slightly.

He hesitated before saying, “Ray. My name’s Ray Narvaez Jr.”

Geoff nodded. “Alright. Nice to meet you, Ray. Sorry about Tauna. She isn’t the most friendly person in the world.”

Ray thought about the long truck ride over to this Garden, and the several pit stops they made along the way. Until they reached this one, Tauna didn’t say a word to him. And whenever they saw other Gardeners, her presence seemed to be enough for them to know what to do. “Yeah. I noticed.”

That got a laugh from the man. “So, what did they teach you to do?” Geoff asked after his laughter died down.

“Peashooter. That’s what they called it.” Now that Ray was saying it out loud, he realized how dumb it sounded.

Geoff didn’t seem to mind the name. “Well it’s about time! I’ve been asking forever for them to send me someone with some ranged fighting training. And who do they send me instead? Someone who specializes in punching. Two Gardeners who specialize in punching. It’s ridiculous.” He shook his head, rolling his eyes. “Anyway, awesome, that’s awesome. Ready to meet the others then?”

Ray nodded, and followed Geoff as the man led him away from the center the garden, out across a field. In the distance, he could see two figures, and as they got closer he saw that they were tending to a couple small potted plants.

“Hey, Michael, Ryan!” Geoff called out as they approached them.

One of the two Gardeners looked up from where he stood, leaning back on his heels with his arms crossed. He tilted his head and grinned. The minute his lips parted, a small amount of acid dripped from his mouth to the dirt. “Hey Geoff, what’s up?”

The other made a shooing motion with his hands at the one standing. “Michael, you’re going to get acid on the turret plant,” he admonished, sounding annoyed.

Michael rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to get acid on your precious little saplings, Ryebread,” he said, but he stepped back anyway.

Pursing his lips, the kneeling Gardener looked over the plant, gently touching the leaves, apparently checking for stray acid. Satisfied that Michael hadn’t messed up his work, he stood, brushing the dirt from his hands and knees. His eyes swept over Ray, giving him a nod. “Hey there. You’re our new ally?”

Ray nodded, his mouth a thin line. Suddenly, under the scrutiny of both these new strangers, he felt nervous and shy.

“This is Ray. Finally those scientists send us a useful ranged fighter,” Geoff introduced him.

“Hey! Are you saying me and Ryan aren’t useful?” Michael exclaimed, placing his hands on his hips and fixing the older man with a glare behind his glasses.

Unperturbed by Michael’s outburst, Geoff waved him off. “Sure you two are useful. Until you rush right in and get put out of commission by the zombies. Then it’s just me and Jack against some giant horde until Jack can get you guys up again.” Ray assumed that Michael and Ryan were the two ‘punching specialists’ Geoff was just lamenting about.

Ryebread—or rather Ryan, Ray assumed his name actually was—smirked. “Well I mean, if you actually got into the battle instead of sitting in the center and playing with your telekinesis, then Michael and I probably wouldn’t go down so often.”

There was a sudden tense silence, and when Ray glanced over at Geoff he saw that the man had a solemn look on his face. He wondered why. Whatever was going through the mustached man’s head, it was obvious that this was a conversation that the group had gone through before.

“I can’t do that. I’m much more use with using my telekinesis from the center.” His voice was tense, Geoff speaking through gritted teeth. When Ryan made only a grunt in response, Geoff changed the subject. “Where’s Jack?”

Michael pointed off in the distance. “East entrance. Setting up some more turret plants and blah blah whatever.”

Geoff nodded his thanks, turning and gesturing for Ray to follow him. “Let’s go, Ray. I’ll introduce you to Jack and you can be his partner for now, since Ryan and Michael insist on being partners over here.”

Ryan grinned at that, although Geoff’s back was turned. “What can I say? The two of us work well together.” He caught Ray staring at him and wiggled his eyebrows in a way that made the young man snort with laughter.

“You mean you lose well together,” Geoff called over his shoulder as he led Ray away, but there was no malice in his voice. To Ray he added, “Those two enjoy fighting the zombies way too much, but they’re actually good at what they do. They’re just… a little reckless.”

Jack was exactly where the other said he would be, and turned out to be a very heavily bearded man. There were small yellow petals poking out from his beard that curled as he turned his head to look at Geoff and Ray as they approached.

“Hey Geoff. Hey there,” he added a greeting to Ray, the corners of his eyes crinkling in a kind smile. Already Ray decided that he liked this Jack person.

“Hey. Everything clear today?”

Jack glanced away, back over the field they were in. He was cradling a large gun that Ray didn’t really recognize—not surprising considering that the only gun he was familiar with was the “peashooter” slung across his back—but he looked rather relaxed.

“It’s been pretty quiet on this end,” he replied, and nodded at Ray. “Who’s this?”

“His name’s Ray. He can shoot, and I thought he’d probably be a good partner to help you guard the entrance over here,” Geoff said, waving a hand to gesture toward Ray.

A corner of Jack’s mouth turned up. “You don’t think I’ve been doing a fine job of this by myself?” He chuckled, adjusting his grip on the gun so that he could reach out a hand to Ray. “Nice to meet you. Can’t wait to defend the Garden with you.”

Ray took his hand to shake, marveling at how much larger the other man’s hands were than his own hands. “Nice to meet you,” he said with a tentative grin.

It was about time to see what being a Gardener was all about.


End file.
